LSAT 111 – Section 3 – Question 17

LSAT 111 - Section 3 - Question 17

October 2001

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT111 S3 Q17
+LR
+Exp
Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw
Math +Math
A
6%
161
B
77%
167
C
14%
163
D
2%
160
E
1%
155
135
149
164
 +Medium 147.206 +SubsectionMedium

Only a very small percentage of people from the service professions ever become board members of the 600 largest North American corporations. This shows that people from the service professions are underrepresented in the most important corporate boardrooms in North America.

Summarize Argument

The author concludes that people from the service professions are underrepresented in the most important corporate boardrooms in North America. She supports this by noting that only a small percentage of them become board members of the 600 largest corporations.

Identify and Describe Flaw

The author’s conclusion is about the amount of board members who are from service professions, while her premise is about the percentage of people from service professions who are board members.

She assumes that, because a small percentage of people from service professions are board members, it must be that a small percentage of board members are from service professions. But what if only 5% of people from service professions are board members, but 75% of board members are from service professions? Then people from the service professions would certainly not be underrepresented.

A
Six hundred is too small a sample on which to base so sweeping a conclusion about the representation of people from the service professions.

The author’s argument isn’t flawed due to sample size. 600 is simply referring to the number of the largest corporations in North America, and the conclusion is about these same “most important” corporations. She isn’t using an unrepresentative sample to draw her conclusion.

B
The percentage of people from the service professions who serve on the boards of the 600 largest North American corporations reveals little about the percentage of the members of these boards who are from the service professions.

Just because a small percentage of people from service professions are board members, does not mean that a small percentage of board members are from service professions. The author mistakenly assumes that it does.

C
It is a mistake to take the 600 largest North American corporations to be typical of corporate boardrooms generally.

The author doesn't make this mistake because she isn’t talking about corporate boardrooms generally. She’s just talking about “the most important corporate boardrooms in North America.”

D
It is irrelevant to smaller corporations whether the largest corporations in North America would agree to have significant numbers of workers from the service professions on the boards of the largest corporations.

How this impacts smaller corporations is irrelevant. The argument only addresses the largest corporations in North America.

E
The presence of people from the service professions on a corporate board does not necessarily imply that that corporation will be more socially responsible than it has been in the past.

The author never addresses corporations’ levels of social responsibility or how board members from service professions might impact social responsibility. (E) is irrelevant.

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LSAT PrepTest 111 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Reading Comprehension

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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